On the trail of Robbie Burns

BRAVEHEART ACTOR JAMES COSMO IS HELPING TO PUMP NEW LIFE INTO THE SCOTTISH FILM INDUSTRY. DOMINIC ROSKROW MET HIM

If ever someone was suited to the task of championing Robert Burns, it's Braveheart and Trainspotting actor James Cosmo. Indeed, you could say Burns has been in his life from the day he was born.

“I was born in a little cottage hospital on the site where the Cutty Sark was built,” he says. “The name Cutty Sark comes from Tam O'Shanter, so the link has always been there. And my father, who was also an actor, used to do fantastic recitals of Burns. I can't remember a time when he wasn't around.”

Cosmo, who has a string of television and film credits to his name, is the presenter on a new DVD called In Search of Burns, and it is not the first time he has turned his attentions to the Scottish poet. He was the mastermind behind Clarinda, a film set in Edinburgh and based on one of the poet's many love affairs.

So the opportunity to travel to all the places where Burns lived and wrote was a labour of love for Cosmo, and an ideal opportunity to learn more about the great man. “I learnt a great deal making it,” he says. “But it was a very emotional experience, too. To go to the places where he lived and to sit in the places where he sat and thought was really incredible.

“He was such a remarkable character. He was a modern thinker with strong social ideals. Much is made of his drinking and his womanising, but if you look closely at him he wasn't a drunkard and a womaniser. He loved women and wrote about women's rights. When he fathered a child outside of his marr...

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• By : Dominic Roskrow
• In : Interview
• Issue : 7
• Page : 26
• Words : 1,114